1. Field
Embodiments of the present disclosure relate to a refrigerator which drives defrosting heaters using a driving unit driving a compressor, and a control method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
A refrigerator receives AC power from an external power source, switches the AC power to DC power, and then uses the DC power. Therefore, AC power is supplied to a defrosting heater removing frost accumulated on an evaporator cooling a storage chamber of the refrigerator, and a component for AC power, such as a relay or a triac, is used to control operation of the defrosting heater.
Recently, in order to reduce energy loss consumed to execute switch from AC power to DC power, researchers have been investigating a hybrid system which supplies DC power directly to respective homes or supplies DC power generated by solar photovoltaic generation or fuel cell generation to respective homes are underway.
As described above, the most used component as a unit to turn the defrosting heater of the refrigerator on/off at AC power is a relay or a triac.
The triac is a component for exclusive use of AC power, and is thus not used to control the on/off of the defrosting heater at DC power.
The relay is variously commercialized to a rated voltage of AC220V and current capacity of several tens of Amperes in case of AC power, but generally has a rated voltage of DC30V and current capacity of several Amperes in case of DC power. Therefore, it may be difficult for the conventional relay to turn the defrosting heater on/off by supplying DC voltage of about 300V or more.
Therefore, in order to control a defrosting heater operated at a voltage of DC300V or more in a system using DC power, a control circuit is formed using an expensive power semiconductor, such as an insulated gate bipolar mode transistor (IGBT) or a high voltage field effect transistor (FET), and thereby, the manufacturing costs of the refrigerator are raised.